—knife, coming up toward his face with the dried smear of blood still on its blade, pressed to his mouth, stroked by his tongue, and even though it’s Volpe doing this she can still feel the cold metal against her own tongue, and taste the stale tang of her own blood. She hears his voice again, deep and guttural, nothing like Nico has ever spoken before. There are flames, and shadows. The air is heavy. His excitement rises, a terrible thing, and the vision blurs as Nico draws back until—
She leaned against the cold stone jamb, breathing hard and yet more used to the transition from psychic flash to reality than she had been before. They’re in an old basement somewhere, she thought, and she knew she had been heading in the right direction.
“Some weird ritual,” she muttered. If she could reach him before the ritual was over, perhaps she could do something to help.
But she had to remember that he was still carrying the knife.
A small rowboat slid toward her along the canal. The old man rowing it offered her a grumbled greeting as she drew even with the boat.
“Lovely afternoon,” he said.
“Hadn’t noticed,” Geena replied. He didn’t respond to her rudeness, but neither did he stop rowing. At least he knows where he’s going, she thought. The walkway ended, and she was faced with turning back or trying to continue along the canal herself. Water taxis were rare in these narrow canals, unless they were carrying travelers to and from hotels, and making her way out to one of the wider waterways would only waste time. But there were three rowboats tied alongside the canal.
Her skin tingled, and it was a very different feeling from Nico’s touch. Eyes were upon her … or attention, at least. Someone was concentrating on her. Her skin grew cold, her spine ice-bound, and she hugged herself tight. Goosebumps speckled her arms and the fine hairs on her neck stood on end. Turning a full circle, squinting against the late afternoon sun, she tried to peer into gloomy alleys and shadowy corners. When the horrible feeling suddenly receded, it felt like a molester’s hand stroking across her skin as he departed.
“Damn it,” she said aloud, needing a noise to break the silence hanging heavy around her.
She looked up and around her at the buildings looming overhead, two- and three-story structures with the water as their foundation. Directly above her a second-floor set of French doors opened onto a small balcony. If anyone had been watching her from up there, they had gone back inside.
“Spooking myself,” Geena said as she started unknotting the rope securing one of the dinghies. But she was not sure what had spooked her. She worked quickly, then bundled the line into the boat and stepped in. She unclasped the oars, placed them in their brackets, and pushed off from the canalside. No one shouted Thief, and if anyone did watch as she began rowing away, they were unconcerned.
Taking a huge breath to try and expunge her fears, she aimed the boat the way she thought she needed to go and, mind still open for more flashes from Nico, started rowing hard.
With Geena’s blood wetted again, Volpe flicked the knife toward all four walls, chanting, “North, south, west, east.” Specks of moisture flew, though they made no sound as they landed. Almost as if the air was absorbing the blood.
He turned several pages in The Book of the Nameless, still clasping hold of the knife in his other hand. Running his finger along lines of text, muttering. Nico thought Volpe had lost himself somewhere in the ritual.
“I know what comes next,” Volpe said, answering the unasked question. “The words must be precise for the Expulsion and Repulsion to be renewed. Then the city will be closed off once more from the three bastard Doges.”
Mad, Nico thought. He must be—
“Mad? Because they’re so old, they’re bound to be dead, of course. Is that what you mean?” Nico did not answer, and Volpe did not need one. “Dead, like me?”
You survived in spirit only, not in flesh, Nico thought. Is that what you’re saying? Somehow they’ve done the same thing?
Volpe hesitated. Nico felt the uncertainty within him.
“I don’t know,” the old magician admitted.
What?
Volpe glanced around the chamber, surveyed the materials of the spell in progress in front of him, and Nico felt him grow impatient.
“Quickly, then,” Volpe said. “And I’ll save the rest for later. I preserved my essence because, without me, the Repulsion would break down. I knew the three of them, the damnable cousins, had each acquired enough of Akylis’ magic to prolong their lives, and I intended to outlast them. When the last of them died, the spell that preserved my heart and spirit was meant to unravel, and then, at last, I could move on to the world beyond this life.”
So, if your spell never unraveled—
“It means that at least one of them is still alive, these long centuries later,” Volpe said. “But one or all three, it matters not. They can’t be allowed to return to Venice. I should never have let them live, but I feared compromising my position in the government and the influence it granted to me. Had I simply killed them …”
But why keep them out? Nico asked. What is it you fear?
“Their hideous ambitions,” Volpe replied. “Each of them, in his own time, fancied himself a magician of sorts. They were novices and fools, and they tapped into a power—an evil—that tainted them, turning their already monumental arrogance and greed into something monstrous.”
This power … that’s Akylis?
But Volpe’s impatience had reached its breaking point.
“Enough,” he said. “No more delays.”
So Nico could only watch as Volpe began the final stage of a ritual designed to keep three six-hundred-year-old men from the city. He read from the book in that old language, punctuating the end of each sentence with a gentle stab of the knife at the air, north and south, west and east. He repeated the process twice more, then he set the knife down and settled back.
It’s done? Nico thought, meaning it as a question for Volpe.
“Almost,” Volpe said. “All that’s needed now is …” He fell silent, perhaps concentrating, perhaps not wishing to give away the final ingredient to this strange ritual.
Then he held out his left hand, pressed the blade to his palm, and stroked it left to right.
Nico gasped. Blood flowed. He winced against the pain, but there was none.
“Ouch,” Volpe said, then he chuckled. He flicked the knife again as he had before, but this time there was no chanting, and his actions had a casual grace. He fisted his hand, then wiped the dripping blood on his trousers. When Volpe glanced at the wound again, Nico saw that it was not too deep or long. The knife was sharp.
“And it’s done,” Volpe said, sighing, relaxing back on his haunches. His shoulders drooped and then the pain sang in Nico, the keen burning across the palm of his left hand. He wanted to scream, but Volpe still had his mouth.
Now will you leave me alone? Nico asked. Volpe raised his head, smiling … and then his smile froze into a grimace.
The air began to vibrate. Nico felt it through the body he did not control—a gentle murmur that grew in intensity and volume, setting the air shimmering like a heat-haze, shaking dust from the ceiling and shrinking the flames in the braziers.
“No!” Volpe said, and Nico had never heard such passion in that spirit’s voice.